Growing up as a teenager, I always wanted to be "cool".. to fit in, to impress girls.. impress my friends. I mean what teenager doesn't want those things? When I was 13, I asked myself, "What is the one thing I can start doing that will help me in all of these areas?", then it hit me, learn how to play the GUITAR and start a band.

When I was in middle school, there was a band by the name of Blink 182, of which I credit was the main source of inspiration behind me getting into rock music and wanting to learn the guitar. If I were to sum up Blink 182 in one word it would be COOL. They were a cool band, plain and simple. When I saw first saw them on MTV and saw the guitarist playing a bright green electric guitar, I became fascinated with the instrument. Everyday I would bring in magazines from Guitar Center and would stare at guitars during class with my friends. We were so obsessed with guitars that we would often get in trouble and have our magazines taken away from us. I think one time we even got sent to detention!

After hours of staring at guitars obsessively through magazines and paying for it in detention, me and 2 of my closest friends at the time decided that we would start a band exactly like Blink 182. Luckily for me, I was the first to call out, "I pick the guitar!", while my other friends got stuck with the bass and drums (both bass and drums are great instruments but as you can tell I am pretty biased towards the guitar *smile).

So there we were, 3 teenagers eager to start a rock band. The next step of course was for me to actually buy a guitar, or should I say convince my parents to buy me a guitar! After weeks of coercing my parents with my savvy teenager persuasion skills, they finally gave in and took me to the music store to pick out what I found out later would be better than an actual girlfriend (no lie) :)

With a new guitar in hand, I felt like I was on top of the world. The only problem was that I didn't know how to play A SINGLE SONG nor anything for that matter. I can still remember bringing the guitar home and plugging it into an amplifier, after about 10 seconds or so of messing around on the thing, I was LOST, confused, and had no idea what to do next. It was then I begged my dad for GUITAR LESSONS. Oh yes, the savvy teenage persuasion skills came back and soon enough they gave in, again.

Here is where the title and point of the blog come in.

I vividly remember my first guitar lesson as I made my way into a small, cramped room in the back of a music store. The first thing I noticed was a music stand with the book, "The Suzuki Method For Guitar" followed by an older gentleman yapping away on his cell phone. This would be the first guy to introduce me to the guitar.

Two lessons later, I ended up quitting with this instructor simply because:

3. I felt like he was in it just for my money. I remember him telling me to practice a song during our lesson while he went out and had a 5 minute smoke break!

As you can imagine, it was not a good first lesson experience.

To make a long story short, I ended up quitting again and again with my next 3 instructors for similar reasons. This caused endless frustration and discouragement for me as well as my parents as they realized their money was going to waste.

Then everything changed when I took lessons with Zen, my 5th instructor. Lessons with Zen was EVERYTHING that I hoped for. Not only was Zen into the same kind of music as me, he had an organized/effective way of teaching and most importantly seemed to GENUINELY CARE about my goals and my progress. I remember thinking to myself, "If only I had started out taking lessons with this guy..."

Unfortunately, Zen passed away a year later and this is what fueled my desire and passion for UROCK. I wanted a way to give back to students the same way Zen had and wanted to make sure no one had to go through what I did starting out.

So to sum it up- FIND AN INSTRUCTOR WHO RELATES TO YOU AND GENUINELY CARES ABOUT YOUR SUCCESS.

Sign up for a FREE lesson with us today by calling 888-321-8762 or by filling out our ENROLLMENT FORM HERE.

HAPPY 2013!

- Jon Kim

ps- Take advantage of our New Year's promotion and get 10% off a full month of lessons if you sign up by 6pm PST January 13th, 2013. Rock on!